The left wing radicals running our government have to GO. My Country has been knocked back to a low rated country, thanks to Obama's lack of leadership and his spineless Administration. He's spent us into oblivion. It appears that he sides with the terrorists. And, then there's the disaster of his ObamaCare! Let's never forget Bengazi. Let's do all we can
to take America back.

Missile Vs. Missile

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Intelligence agencies have stepped up drone attacks in Waziristan, but the

Taliban say they’re still plotting a big attack on the West.

Thibault Camus / AP

A bomb scare closed the Eiffel Tower this week.

For weeks now, as missiles from American drones have snuffed out their leaders and terrorized their recruits in the remote mountains of Pakistan’s North Waziristan area, Al Qaeda fighters have kept their spirits up by telling each other they were about to have their revenge.“It’s like they’ve just been waiting for news, as if they were all excited about something big about to happen in the West,” says an Afghan Taliban intelligence officer known to NEWSWEEK who operates as a liaison between his organization and Al Qaeda. For security reasons he would not allow his name to be published. The source said one senior Qaeda activist told him that Europeans and Americans think“our minds and bodies are in the mountains of the [Pakistan] tribal areas, but soon we will carry out a visible offensive with long-term consequences in their own Western homes and cities.”

Reports out of Britain overnight suggest that more than bravado may be at work here:intelligence agencies have uncovered terrorist plans to launch simultaneous commando-style attacksin Germany, France, and Britain that would bereminiscent of the slaughter in Mumbai almost two years ago. Such attacks have been a major concern of Western police forces because they require no special weaponry—just guns, training, and a will to die fighting.The dramatic increase in drone attacks over the last few weeks is intended to disrupt the plot against European targets. One drone strike reportedly killed the head of Qaeda operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, known as Shaikh Fateh, just last Saturday. The Qaeda plot was in an “advanced but not imminent stage” and that intelligence agencies had been tracking the operatives “for some time.” The implication is that the onslaught of drone attacks, especially in the last month, has succeeded in thwarting the plot.

The anxiety among intelligence agencies in Europe is obvious. In Paris the Eiffel Tower was evacuated last night—the second time this month—because of a bomb threat that turned out to be a hoax. The busy Saint-Lazare train station was cleared out for the same reason on Monday, and the Saint-Michel underground hub was emptied on Sept. 14. French soldiers in combat gear are patrolling conspicuously around several potential terrorist targets in the city.

On Sept. 11, the anniversary of Al Qaeda’s attacks on New York and Washington, the head of France’s counterterrorism operations, Bernard Squarcini of the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence, saidthe risk of attacks on French soil has “never been as high” as it is now.Squarcini did not elaborate on the nature of the plots against the country, but he did touch on some of Al Qaeda’s motives for targeting France.The French Parliament’s recent passage of a law to ban veils covering all or most of a woman’s face is also a factor heightening the threat against the country. Such coverings are considered mandatory by many extremist Muslim groups,but even moderates feel the issue has been used as part of widespread anti-Muslim rabble-rousing in Europe.

“Homegrown” terrorist cells in Europe and the United States are often less well trained and less effective in action. But there have been growing indications in recent years that the core leadership in Al Qaeda is trying to pull these disparate elements together in the hope that it might carry out another terrorist spectacular—if not on the scale of 9/11.

The same source said Al Qaeda is looking to establish training areas outside Pakistan and Afghanistan.Conceivably, some of these may be in remote areas of Central Asia or Africa. AQIM is expected to link up soon with the Al-Shabab militants in Somalia, if indeed it hasn’t done so already. But Al Qaeda’s core leadership may also encourage training operations inside Europe and the United States.

In the meantime, technology is allowing it to improve what New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has called its “virtual Afghanistan,” using Web-based voice and video communications.As a young Taliban fighter told NEWSWEEK recently, “I can train people on the Internet or on the telephone, no problem.”

Increasingly, the fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliates is a race: can the West penetrate its strongholds and eliminate its leadership faster than it can organize attacks in the West?

Both sides have started a dangerous sprint, but the finish line is nowhere in sight.

Lone Star Lady's Note: As long as we have the most radically liberal, Pro-Muslim President in Obama, America will never stand strong against radical islam! When we are attacked again (and we will be), Obama He will SLITHER off to join his other SLIME commie-Czars! After all, he's one of them! Just my opinion.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

In 2007, Nancy Pelosi raised eyebrows when she demanded that the previous House speaker's airplane be scrapped for a much bigger one, the size of a Boeing 757. Pelosi claimed that she merely wanted to avoid having to refuel between Washington and San Francisco, where she lives.

Last year, more eyebrows were raised when it was learned that Pelosi was using the US Air Force as her own personal airline,commandeering a fleet of jets to shuttle her family and staff. Her underlings even wrote nasty memos to the Air Force when specific jets weren't available.

Now Pelosi has raised eyebrows again; not over her taxpayer-funded fleet, but over her taxpayer-funded office space. According to recent reports, Pelosi abandoned the district offices she's been in for 20 years for fresh new ones. The new office has 33 percent more space, but it will cost taxpayers 300 percent more: $19,000 a month for RENT! That's double the next-highest rent paid by a House member. This time, Pelosi's excuse for the price tag is her supposed security needs and better energy bills.

Since Democrats have run this government, millions of Americans have been foreclosed on, and millions more have houses underwater.

The program Obama's Democrats claimed would help keep people in their homes is a total bust. So with all that failure around, it's sure nice to see somebody is living large -- even though it's not on her own dime. She's living large on us. Typical liberal Democrat punk.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Click the link above to see the diagram of the major Left Wing Progressive groupsresponsible for the Free Gaza marches and flotillas – "Your" President OBAMA Assists the Jihad Against Israel. So do BO's Czars and many other Left Wing Radical Marxists Islamic sympathizers! God help us!

Friday, April 30, 2010

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Jewish groups are calling on U.N. member representatives to walk out in protest when Iran's president speaks next week at the United Nations.Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's plans to address the U.N. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference on May 3 makes a mockery of the proceedings, Jewish groups said.

"We call on all countries, particularly those that value democracy and freedom, to leave the United Nations hall when Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rises to speak," the president and executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Alan Solow and Malcolm Hoenlein, said in a statement. "Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability poses a threat to the region and the entire Western world. To have President Ahmadinejad address this review conference makes a mockery of the efforts of many countries to prevent nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism from becoming the gravest global threats of this century."

The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York issued an action alert urging readers to e-mail U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at sg@un.org to protest Ahmadenijad's inclusion at the conference.The World Jewish Congress asked its member communities to contact their government representatives to persuade them to participate in the protest walkout, saying in a statement, "It is dismaying that, once again, the U.N. is allowing the head of a regime, foremost in the sponsorship of terrorism and the abuse of human rights, who defies U.N. resolutions regarding its nuclear ambitions, to appear before the international body."After all, the U.N. is made up of mostly Muslims and MUSLIM TERRORIST SYMPATHIZERS(including B.O. and his Administration). This sucks! Anyone who isn't, should walk out! This Terrorist leader should NOT be at the U.N. in the first place!Lone Star Lady

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Jewish groups are calling on U.N. member representatives to walk out in protest when Iran's president speaks next week at the United Nations.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's plans to address the U.N. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference on May 3 make a mockery of the proceedings, Jewish groups said.

"We call on all countries, particularly those that value democracy and freedom, to leave the United Nations hall when Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rises to speak," the president and executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Alan Solow and Malcolm Hoenlein, said in a statement.

"Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability poses a threat to the region and the entire Western world. To have President Ahmadinejad address this review conference makes a mockery of the efforts of many countries to prevent nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism from becoming the gravest global threats of this century."

The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York issued an action alert urging readers to e-mail U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at sg@un.org to protest Ahmadenijad's inclusion at the conference.

The World Jewish Congress asked its member communities to contact their government representatives to persuade them to participate in the protest walkout, saying in a statement, "It is dismaying that, once again, the U.N. is allowing the head of a regime, foremost in the sponsorship of terrorism and the abuse of human rights, who defies U.N. resolutions regarding its nuclear ambitions, to appear before the international body."

Of all the nerve . . . . but what else to expect, the U.N. is nothing but MUSLIMS and other terrorists sympathizers! This sucks!

Monday, April 19, 2010

Dr. Wortham penned this in Nov. 2008.

Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University 's Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association. She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.

In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas.

Dr. Wortham is author of "The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness" which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.

She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality.

Recently she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.

This article (below) by her is something worth your time to read.

"Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am Black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a Black president to know that I am a person of worth and that life is worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of America .

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America .

Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depends. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them.

I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University 's Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that "fairness" is the equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that a man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantlybelieves that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office of the president of the United States , the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmy Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a Black person.

So, toast yourselves, 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee, Harvard, Princeton , Yale, Duke, Stanford and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good.

There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

God Help Us all..."

After I read what this "black" woman had said, made me almost

jump right up out of my chair andcheer!

Now we all have to march behind Obama into the depth of HELL! Yes, God Help Us All! NODEMS 2010 - NOBAMA 2012

Friday, March 26, 2010

Well, Charleston Heston would roll over in his grave if he knew about this!

The great pay-back has begun, and it's going to be ugly. The gun grabbers in Congress are trying to pay back the anti-gun extremists who put them and Barack Obama in office.

You see, H.R. 45 is Barack Obama’s gun control package, and it includes the worst anti-gun measures he’s supported over the years. H.R. 45 establishes a NATIONAL gun registry database of every gun and its owner -- for the whole county! Your private information and every gun you own would be in the system.

But it gets worse. Under H.R. 45, you must:

* Pass a written examination to prove that you are “fit” to exercise your Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.

* Release your medical records -- including confidential mental health records -- to the government to get your “fitness” to own a firearm approved.

* Observe a two-day waiting period before buying a gun.

* Pay a gun tax of $25 or more on every firearm purchase.

"Not until they pry it out of my cold, dead fingers . . . .." -- C. Heston, his last appearance as President of the National Rifle Association. I AGREE!

Friday, March 19, 2010

President Obama gave a thumbs up Thursday to the outline of a plan to legalize illegal immigrants and create a flow of low-skilled foreign workers for the future, saying the immigration bill being worked on by a Republican and a Democrat is "promising."

In their broad blueprint, Sens. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, (Graham is a JERK!) call for illegal immigrants to be put on a path to citizenship, offer green cards to keep high-skilled foreign university graduates and would create a temporary program for low-skilled workers, with some also getting the chance to become citizens.

The senators also proposed to turn all Social Security cards into tamper-proof IDs to be checked by employers when they are about to hire a worker. The cards would include biometric information designed to prevent counterfeiting -- but the senators said the information would not be stored in a government database. We are FOOLS if we believe that our biometric information won't be stored in government databases! THAT'S WHY THEY ARE GATHERING THE INFO IN THE FIRST PLACE. Another way to CONTROL US - to know all about us . . . where we go, what we do, our medication, health problems, our bank accounts, YES, and probably what we EAT! We've got to fight against this! OMG! What will these evil Bstds do next!Hello, New World Order! Goodbye Freedom!

The Obama administration is poised to ban offshore oil drilling on the outer continental shelf until 2012 or beyond. Meanwhile, Russia is making a bold strategic leap to begin drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. While the United States attempts to shift gears to alternative fuels to battle the purported evils of carbon emissions, Russia will erect oil derricks off the Cuban coast.

Offshore oil production makes economic sense. It creates jobs and helps fulfill America's vast energy needs. It contributes to the gross domestic product and does not increase the trade deficit. Higher oil supply helps keep a lid on rising prices, and greater American production gives the United States more influence over the global market. Obama should be thrown out of office!

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

This Saturday, Pelosi and her Democrats may pass the Health Care Bill with House Rule -- requiring NO Vote -- skipping Formal vote! In the first place, it is a repulsive Health Care Bill of nothing but entitlements. It will keep the People of this Country under TOTAL GOVERNMENT CONTROL!

The Democrats believe that we are the "dumb masses" and be grateful to them. We will not be when all of our freedoms are stripped away! But then, it will be way too late to do anything about it.

The Dems believe that the ENDS justifies the MEANS -- they will RAM this bill thru using any way, any thing they can think of using. Any dirty, low-down method, doesn't matter as long as they get it done!

If passed WE WILL CHALLENGE IT. According to Article 1; Section 7, of our Constitution, pushing this bill thru without voting on it, is unconstitutional! The Liberal Democrats don't believe it, but All hell will break loose against them!

Oh, BTW, Obama doesn't care if they lose seats in this coming November election. . . . just as long as HE get HIS Bill passed . . . by any means they can use to do it!

Saturday, March 6, 2010

“That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed,When the gales of November came early.”– Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, 1976

The gales of November may have come early for House Democrats, cloaked as the Ides of March.

If Democrats surrender control of the House this fall, people will point to March 3 as the day everything buckled. Wednesday was a hellish day for House Democrats. It started just before 9:00 am with Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) relinquishing his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee due to an ethics probe.

Shortly after Democrats came to power in 2007, Rangel published his autobiography “…And I Haven’t Had a Bad Day Since.” The memoir chronicled how Rangel survived the streets of Harlem as a kid and joined the Army. Rangel was wounded in Korea during the battle of Kunu-ri and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for Valor. Rangel derived the title of his book from remarks he made that he hasn’t had a bad a day since Kunu-ri.

On Wednesday afternoon, Rangel met with fellow Democrats to explain why he gave up the Ways and Means gavel. Mindful of the book title, he was asked if this had been a bad day. “I haven’t had a bad day yet,” Rangel laughed. “But it’s been close!”

It may not have been a bad day for Rangel. But it sure was for Democrats.

On Wednesday, lawmakers gathered in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall to honor the late Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) who died unexpectedly last month. Murtha’s untimely passing throws his Pennsylvania seat into play this fall.

By afternoon, President Obama unfurled his final health care reform plan. Mr. Obama hopes to flip the votes of the nearly 40 House Democrats who opposed the original health bill in November. But the president’s retrenched package failed to impress many moderate Democrats who voted no last year.

Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK) was particularly outspoken. “They can break my arms. They can do whatever they want to and they’ll never get my vote. Ever,” Boren said. “I mean they’ll have to walk across my dead body if they want my vote on this issue.”

Boren added that he thought a lot of House Democrats could lose their seats if they supported the bill.

By mid-afternoon, a brushfire sizzled across Capitol Hill. A male aide to rookie Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) accused his boss of sexual harassment. Massa called the allegation “totally false.” A Naval Academy graduate, Massa said the only thing he was guilty of was slinging around course language in the office.“I am a salty old sailor,” Massa said.

But by Wednesday night, the office of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said as soon as the leader found out about the accusation, he ordered Massa to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee within 48 hours or he would do it himself.

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) described the swirl of accusations surrounding Massa as a “one, two, three person removed rumor.”

However by Friday, Massa decided to just resign. Citing his sharp tongue.

No one knows what happened between Massa and the male aide. But when asked about Massa Wednesday, Hoyer invoked former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) without prompting. Foley resigned in disgrace in 2006 after sending inappropriate messages to teenage, male House pages.

If Wednesday is the Democrats’ Waterloo, it came eight months early. Democrats also say the election of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) sent them an early wakeup call.

Democrats seem to have doused some of the flames by getting Rangel to step down as chairman. And to paraphrase boxer Roberto Duran, as of 5 pm Monday, House Democrats will have “no Massa.”

But is this the end of the Democrats’ troubles? Or is it the end of the beginning?

“This is an ethical valley they’re starting into,” said Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR). “It may be the Grand Canyon.”

House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (D-CT) stated,“History more often than not is instructive. It doesn’t repeat itself,” Larson said. “Hopefully you learn from it.”

Regardless, distinct political winds are howling. And the question is whether the “gales of November came early” for Democrats when March blew in like a lion.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Democratic strategists say that if President Obama's re-election prospects look shaky, he could dump Vice President Joe Biden from the 2012 national ticket and choose Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate. (AHhhhhhhG)

It's inside-Washington speculation at this point, but the strategists make a good case for such a shift. "Biden was named in the first place to shore up Obama on foreign policy issues, and Obama doesn't need that anymore," says a former Clinton adviser. That's because Obama has learned the ropes and has assembled a strong foreign policy and national security team.

(What? Obama doesn't have a clue about foreign policy. He doesn't know anything about

a n y t h i n g! He's a thug!)

Elevating Clinton to the vice presidential slot would accomplish several objectives: It would appeal to female voters (not me) and the still-powerful cadre of Clinton admirers (not me), give Obama more of a pragmatic luster, and shunt the gaffe-prone Biden aside. (But, can Hillary Rotten Clinton read a teleprompter?) And it would theoretically discourage Clinton, a former senator from New York, from challenging Obama in the 2012 primaries, Democratic insiders say, because as vice presidentshe would be considered Obama's heir for 2016. (OMG!) Clinton would be 69 that year, the same age as Ronald Reagan when he won the presidency in 1980.

As for Clinton, she has said that she doesn't plan to serve as secretary of state longer than four years, but so far she has expressed no interest in another presidential run. (Of course she's interested in being president. That's always been her goal). She was the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 but lost to Obama after a long series of primaries and caucuses. A White House strategist attributed the speculation about Biden and Clinton to "cocktail party chatter" and said Obama is "very pleased" with Biden's job performance. (He's "pleased" with Biden because they are both the same ILK)!

I cannot wait for 2012 . . . to vote ALL of them out of office. Let's get this country back!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

One year after Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration, the people of Massachusetts have staged an uprising, sending a Republican to the Senate to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in a special election. In an upset of epic proportions-- turning around a 30-point, post-primary deficit -- Senator-elect Scott Brown (R-Mass.) trounced his Democrat opponent, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley by five full percentage points. Brown ran a national campaign as the 41st vote in the Senateto stop the government takeover of health care. He opposed the out-of-control spending, the cap and trade national energy tax and the Democrats’ disastrous approach to terrorism. Brown turned this race into a referendum on the out of control government in Washington and won a resounding victory.

There is no spinning this one away. Democrats lost this supermajority seat in the bluest of blue states (which Obama carried by 26 points) to expressly put an end to their monopoly on power.

The worst thing Republicans could do is misread this breathtaking victory. This wound was self-inflicted by the arrogant liberal leadership in Washington from the White House to Congress. Brown won thanks to the huge number of independents that turned out for him and the reported 22% of Democrats that crossed party lines to vote for him. “Tonight the independent voice of Massachusetts has spoken,” Brown said in his victory speech, as the crowd chanted “Forty-one, forty-one,” in reference to the Obama agenda-stopping 41st vote in the Senate and “Seat him now, seat him now,” warning national Democrats not to try to play politics with the timing on Brown’s swearing in.

“One thing is clear, voters do not want the trillion-dollar health care bill that is being forced on the American people,” Brown said. “This bill is not being debated openly and fairly. It will raise taxes, hurt Medicare, destroy jobs, and run our nation deeper into debt. It is not in the interest of our state or country -- we can do better.”

Holding up a Boston Herald newspaper with the headline, “He Did It!” Brown said, “Every day I hold this office I will give all that is in me to serve you well and make you proud. Most of all I will remember that while the honor is mine, this senate seat belongs to no one person, no one political party. As I’ve said before, and you’ve heard it today, and you’ll hear it loud and clear, this is the people’s seat.” Brown, a lieutenant colonel and 30-year member of the Massachusetts Army National Guard, also spoke against giving terrorists refuge in our civilian court system. “Let me say this to the people who wish to harm us,” Brown said. “I believe, and I know all of you believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation. Let me make it very, very, very clear. They do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. The message we need to send in dealing with terrorists is our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them and not lawyers to defend them.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell immediately welcomed his caucus’ newly-elected senator with open arms. Should the tone-deaf Democrat leadership try to force nationalized health care through the House, the most likely scenario would be for the House to attempt to pass unchanged the highly-controversial bill Senate Democrats rammed through over Christmas. That would mean the Cornhusker Kickback, the Second Louisiana Purchase and the selective deals for unions backing Obama in the last election would remain in the bill unchanged.

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) released a statement after the election that left no doubt that at least some in the Senate have heard the voters and will oppose any shenanigans in pressing a quick Senate vote on any changes the House might offer to the bill.“

In many ways the campaign in Massachusetts became a referendum not only on health care reform but also on the openness and integrity of our government process,” Webb said. “It is vital that we restore the respect of the American people in our system of government and in our leaders. To that end, I believe it would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated.”

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) sounded the alarm before the election results were in. “There’s going to be a tendency on the part of our people to be in denial about all this,” Bayh told ABC News, but “if you lose Massachusetts and that’s not a wake-up call, there’s no hope of waking up.”Even Howard Dean, chairman emeritus of the Democratic Party was forced to admit on a cable news program, “It was a backlash against Washington.”

As Americans become more skeptical of the administration's promise that the stimulus package will create or save 3.5 million jobs, there's an added frustration: Even if the $787 billion act is successful in creating work, Americans may never know.

That's because counting the jobs involves estimating what would have happened without legislation, a slippery task even if the economy weren't so volatile. "We will probably have a better sense two years down the road, after a number of careful studies," says Steven Davis, a University of Chicago economics professor. "But even then, there will be lots of arguments." The administration says that 150,000 jobs were created in the first hundred days after the stimulus was passed. But that figure comes from the same economic formula that predicted how many jobs the stimulus would create overall, not from reporting on the ground.So far, two measures are being used, economic modeling and direct reporting. The first, a formula from the president's Council of Economic Advisers, relies on the well-established idea that a certain amount of spending generates a given number of jobs. It's particularly useful since it accounts for ripple effects that direct reporting doesn't, like how a construction worker buying a sandwich on the job supports the local eatery and lets it hire more people. But like many economic estimates, it's inexact.The other yardstick is direct reporting, in which agencies tell the government how many people they hired with stimulus funds. But that can also get murky. The Office of Management and Budget recently released guidance on such an assessment to stimulus funding recipients. Experts say that although it clarified how recipients are supposed to report jobs and other data, it doesn't make an exact count likelier. "The fear was that [job reporting] would not capture the full extent of jobs created or retained," says Gary Bass, director of the watchdog group OMB Watch. "This does nothing to allay those fears."Part of the problem is that job reporting goes down only to the first subcontractor level. If a state receives a stimulus grant and subcontracts it to a city, for example, the state counts how many people it employed to administer the funding and estimates how many the city employed. The sum of the two is reported as the number of jobs created. But if the city contracts out the program, as expected, those jobs aren't added in.Then, experts say, there is the question of how to count "saved" jobs, especially important since the final job numbers will lump those together with "created" jobs. Some cases are clear-cut, like school districts' decisions not to pink-slip employees after stimulus funds came through. But as agencies get more information about what funding will be available and plan accordingly, defining a saved job gets trickier. "It will likely become a question of 'If you did not have this money, what budget changes would you need to have made?' " says Leslee Fritz, director of Michigan's economic recovery office.It's not unlikely that the White House will issue more guidance on counting stimulus jobs.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

The Left has always had an erratic relationship with the Constitution. Liberal judges are known for discovering constitutional rights that had eluded judges for centuries. That’s because some of those so-called rights, such as the right to privacy, have no basis in the text of the Constitution but rather somewhere in its “emanations” and “penumbras.”

But the alleged right to privacy has its limits even among liberals. The Left’s judges routinely rule that the right protects abortion on demand, but its legislators have no qualms about extinguishing the right of citizens to make other private healthcare decisions free of government coercion.

While much of the healthcare debate has focused on arguments over policy, a more fundamental debate is taking place over whether the Democrats’ healthcare overhaul is even constitutional. There is nothing in the Constitution that allows the federal government to be involved in healthcare, and the loud affirmation of this fact may offer conservatives their best chance to pull the plug on Obamacare.

It would be ironic if it is in the courts, liberals’ favorite venue for forcing social change, that the rule of law were restored and the personal freedom of the American people affirmed. The power to regulate each citizen’s health care is not listed in the Constitution among the federal government’s enumerated powers, and the 10th Amendment makes clear that any powers not specifically granted to Congress are reserved to the states. But among liberals, for whom it is an article of faith that government-run healthcare is a basic human right that no person of goodwill could oppose, any arguments about its constitutionality are irrelevant. When pressed to address constitutionality, liberals often point to the commerce clause. The Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate “commerce among the several states.” But that does not mean Congress can meddle in anything that affects economic activity. The Supreme Court has rejected the notion that the commerce clause allows Congress to regulate non-economic activities just because, somewhere down the road, they may have an effect on economic activity. The most egregiously unconstitutional element of the health care legislation concerns the individual mandate, which requires each American to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty of up to $25,000 or one year in prison. The individual mandate is essential to the Left’s plan to impose government-run health care. Without it, because of the left’s insistence on barring insurance companies from denying coverage to people for pre-existing conditions, people would simply obtain insurance only when they have a need for medical care.

The individual mandate is a way to keep costs down, but there is not constitutional authorization for it. As Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has said, “…here would be the first time where our [federal] government would demand that people buy something that they may or may not want…and…that’s not constitutionally sound.”

Back in 1994, during the Democrats’ last foray into healthcare reform, the Congressional Budget Office stated that compelling individuals to buy insurance would be “an unprecedented form of federal action” because “the government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the U.S.” Liberals often liken the health insurance individual mandate to the law requiring all people who own automobiles to have auto insurance. But it’s a flawed argument. Only state governments, not the federal government, can require automobile owners to obtain auto insurance (and two states, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, don’t). Also, as legal scholars at the Heritage Foundation point out in a recent legal memorandum, “automobile insurance requirements impose a condition on the voluntary activity of driving; a health insurance mandate imposes a condition on life itself.” The Heritage memo, titled “Why the personal mandate to buy health insurance is unprecedented and unconstitutional,” also notes that states require drivers to maintain auto insurance only to cover injuries to others. “The mandate does not require drivers to insure themselves or their property against injury or damage. Thus the auto insurance requirement covers the dangers and liabilities posed by drivers to third parties only…” It would be an understatement to say that individual mandate advocates have struggled to defend its inclusion.

In a series of interviews conducted by CNSNews.com, Democrat after Democrat failed to give a coherent answer about where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandate that individuals buy health insurance. Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka said he was “not aware” of the Constitution giving Congress the authority, while Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) said he’d “have to check the specific sections,” and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) flatly admitted that he did not know. Senator Blanche Lincoln should have taken the Nelson route but instead opined, “Well, I Just think the Constitution charges Congress with the health and well-being of the people.” And Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) dismissed the question, insisting that “nobody” questioned Congress’ authority to require individual mandate. (What a jerk). Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) said Congress authorization to impose an individual mandate could be found in the part of Constitution that authorizes the federal government to “provide for the health, welfare and the defense of the country.” (How Lame). But, as CNSNews.com pointed out, “health” is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.

Then there was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,who simply responded “Are you serious? Are you serious?” By which she seemed to be saying, “Do you seriously think we progressives would allow constitutionality to get in the way of our half-century old goal of government-run health care?!”

There are other constitutional problems with Obamacare. For instance, if the public option provides for abortion, many Americans will be compelled to subsidize other people’s abortions, which would infringe upon the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom. And constitutional concerns exist over exempting some states from Obamacare’s provisions. In Harry Reid’s fire sale for votes, he essentially agreed that some states would bear the brunt of the economic burden of the health care monstrosity but not others.

Presently state legal experts are examining whether the constitution can force such a burden upon them. Other constitutional issues are buried deep in the pages of the bill just now seeing the light of day. For example, in spite of recent Supreme Court decisions raising constitutional questions about racial set asides, Obamacare promises federal financial assistance to medical schools, but only if they have programs that serve “under-represented” groups based on race, sex, religion and sexual orientation. (OMG)

An unintended consequence of the health care debate may be that legislators on both sides of the isle are dusting off and reading their copies of the U.S. Constitution.

Conservative members of Congress should resolve in the New Year to talk more often and more loudly about the constitutional arguments against Obamacare. If it passes, conservatives should test its constitutionality in the courts. It may well be that the jobs saved or created by the Obama Administration’s health care plan go to lawyers, not doctors.(I, for one, will pray that BO and his ILK haven't won, yet! If they do, then we are in terrible trouble! -- Lone Star Lady)

BiBi Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel

The Three Big Pigs -

About Me

I'm a Conservative Reagan Republican woman living on the Great High Plains in the middle of the Texas Panhandle. Thankfully, we are conservatives up here. We are in Tornado Alley, the land is flat, we have cattle and cowboys as far as the eye can see, and it's windy most days, but I wouldn't live any place else! I've been a widow since 1997, have two grown children and two teenaged grandsons.